Dan Auerbach

Dan Auerbach is best known as the guitarist and vocalist for The Black Keys. From Akron, Auerbach has recorded with the Black Keys and worked on solo efforts, and has won several Grammy Awards. Dan's guitar collection is notable, as he plays multiple vintage guitars and two-piece composite guitars. His amps are mostly vintage, but quite a few pedals are readily accessible. Check out Dan Auerbach's full list of guitars, amps, and more on Equipboard.

Premier Guitar meets up with Dan Johnson - guitar tech to Dan Auerbach of the... more

Premier Guitar meets up with Dan Johnson - guitar tech to Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys and pulls out the Harmony H78 at 13:29, "This is probably the one that people are going to be most familiar with. It's a Hamony H78. And he's been playing this for several years. Boy, maybe five years or something. This is what he still uses in the middle of the set when they do a few songs as just a two-piece again. Even though they have a bass player and keyboard player that are playing with them now, they walk off for four songs or more. And he plays this guitar because it has a very distinctive sound because it's totally hollow and has these kickin' pickups in it. I've seen a lot of guitars that have this model of them in it but this one in particular sounds amazing. I don't know what model they actually are but they are usually referred to as Gold Foils because they came in so many different guitars. But this guitar has three switches, one for each and volume and tone for each. We've never really used anything but the bridge pickup. He's always collected guitars so he's had quite a lot of them over the years, but this one he's had in his operation for some time. He bought it from one of my helpers at the guitar shop in Akron. I had a guy helping me working on this thing and it needed a little bit of work. He wasn't working on it at the time because we had other things to work on. Then Dan came in one day and saw it and said 'Woo, how much for that one?' So he didn't buy it that day, but we got it ready for the next time he came by - and he sure did. So he's been playing that for quite a while."

You can see and listen to Dan Auerbach playing the Harmony H78 during this live performance for SiriusXM.

"Dan's next guitar, chronologically, would be this one, another Harmony. It's... more

"Dan's next guitar, chronologically, would be this one, another Harmony. It's a StratoTone. It's obviously had a lot of work done to it too. It has different tuning keys; I made new knot for it. Dan's dad deals antiques, and one of his cohorts or accomplices in the antique business gave Dan this guitar. But it didn't have any parts at all. It didn't have any tuners, no pick guard, no pickups, no Bigsby or anything. I think it had that [white] switch. Anyway, he said 'I want to make this work,' and so I got a set of Lindy Fralin pickups. This old Bigsby I think I had in my shop already. I made that pickguard. I was able to figure out, well it was pretty obvious, when you take the pickguard off its bright red underneath there because this awesome two-tone burst used to be a three-tone burst, like many from around maybe 1962 or whenever this is from - that era. The red on many sunbursts just dissipates, it just comes out, it just disappears like a three-tone stratocaster a lot of times becomes over time. So I just copied the image and made a pickguard to fit it. I put these Fralins in, the Bigsby on. Nothing really fancy. He plays this one in open-G tuning. For right now he's only playing it on one song, 'Run Right Back,' which is on the new record. Although he recorded a few of the other songs in that tuning, he's transposed them to standard just for ease. But this one particular song has that powerful open-D on the bass string and it has to be in that tuning to make it and be effective. It's heavy duty, and it's got a pretty heavy-duty sound as well because those are P-90s, they just crunch as they should," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Harmony StratoTone Electric Guitar.

"This is the one that is his current favorite. It's a '64 Guild Thunderbird. ... more

"This is the one that is his current favorite. It's a '64 Guild Thunderbird. It has a Bo-Diddley look to it. You don't see too many people through the history of rock-n-roll guitars playing this model for some reason. And I don't know why because it's awesome. It's got an amazing headstock shape. It's just not symmetrical. And I don't believe it's on any other Guild model either. I did have to do some work to it, but it's largely original. Of course, I did a setup, I did some fret work, I carved the saddles a few notches and other stuff to fine tune it. This bridge pickup didn't work so we had to have some coils made for it. Dan bought this shortly before we did Saturday Night Live last December. In fact, very shortly. He came in and said 'I need this guitar to work,' and it was a bit of a project. You would see this bridge and tremolo arrangement on a Hagstrom from the mid to late 60s too. I'm not sure who made them, maybe Burns or something like that. It's a great tremolo; it stays in tune great. Dan uses the tremolo a lot but he uses it gently, or fast but still gentle. He never tries to get crazy with it. The most amazing weird feature is that it has a stand built right into the back. It has a magnet too to keep it from coming up, but it doesn't work that great. We don't use that because I have a fancier stand that holds the set of guitars," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Guild S-200 Thunderbird Electric Guitar.

"This guitar is the Howlin' For You guitar. It's basically the same guitar as... more

"This guitar is the Howlin' For You guitar. It's basically the same guitar as the Supro, it's just a National instead. It has different inlays. It's the same neck, same non-adjustable neck. I spent a lot of time fixing that one up. Same pickups, same funky bridge pickups. It does have this really cool trim on it though. The stainless steel arm is pretty unique. There's a really interesting spring system under there too. Of course, you can select any of the pickups that you like too here. There's lots of knobs again. Same fiberglass construction. It gives it that sort of hollow guitar sound. Like the Harmony guitar, it's totally hollow and that's a big part of the sound Dan gets when he's playing especially the two-piece stuff. When it's just him and Patrick on stage feedback is a big part of the show because he's playing really loud and he's got the Big Muff on, and it's exploding," says Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the National Westwood 77 Electric Guitar.

"We have this Supro. I have to admit there are so many models of these that I... more

"We have this Supro. I have to admit there are so many models of these that I don't remember this one off hand. But I am very familiar with them, I've had several of them myself. The Supro and the National are pretty much the same guitar really. The shape is different. It's a fiberglass body bolted together. It has a very interesting bridge pickup too. There's a piezo pickup and some coils inside the bass of that bridge. It's an interesting sound. It kind of sounds like an acoustic guitar but not really. I mean not compared to modern standards. This has the typical National hot single coils - they really crunch. It has lots of knobs; everyone likes that. The thing about it is I've had to do quite a lot of work to it. I've had to refret it and adjust the bridge and secure too so it would stay in tune. This has a truss rod in it, but it's the old box style, like an old Martin would have. It's not adjustable. Unfortunately, on a rock-n-roll guitar to have good action that's playable and clear you have to be able to really fine tune that. The only way to do that is not in the field, it's in the shop because you have to rig it up with the right amount of bow and then you have to test - take the strings off a lot of times until you get it right. Then you can finally polish and recrown the frets and finish the job off. It's a little bit of a process but it's super stable. I did that probably three years ago and hasn't needed anything since then. This song is mostly used for the Brothers - anything from the Brothers. Not every song but ones like 'Tighten Up' and 'She's Long Gone' and a couple of other ones too," explains Dan Auerbach's guitar tech about the Supro Martinique Electric Guitar.